Here’s the short version: Dr. Shanna Swan — epidemiologist, author of Count Down — takes six couples with unexplained infertility and removes plastic-related chemicals from their lives for 90 days. Food packaging, personal care, kitchen tools. The chemicals she’s targeting are phthalates and bisphenols like BPA. Both mess with your hormones. Both have been found in human reproductive tissue.

By week six, BPA had dropped to undetectable in most participants. Sperm quality improved in several of the men. Three couples got pregnant.

It’s a small study. Scientists are careful about what conclusions you can draw. But the direction is hard to ignore.

I wasn’t surprised by any of it. I’d been saying some version of this to friends and family for almost two years now.

My conscious clothing journey started with yoga pants. I haven’t worn synthetic leggings in almost two years now. It sounds small. But when you think about what’s pressed against your skin during a workout, it stopped feeling small pretty quickly. Read below to find out what got me there.

The dog study

I read this study where dogs had to wear polyester underpants for two years. One group polyester, one group cotton, one group nothing.

After 24 months: the polyester group had a significant drop in sperm count, reduced motility, more abnormal sperm. The cotton group was fine. The control group was fine.

When they removed the polyester underpants, most dogs recovered. Two of them didn’t.

Then a follow-up in 2008 looked at female dogs. Polyester fabric for 12 months. Disrupted progesterone. Failed to conceive. Remove the fabric, wait five months — hormones normalise, they conceive.

I know how this sounds. Dogs in underpants. But I genuinely cannot stop thinking about it.

These studies are old and small and the jump to humans needs caution.

But the question it leaves behind: if polyester worn loosely for two years does this to dogs, then what is it doing to us? Pressed directly against our most sensitive skin. Every single day, for decades.

We should be asking this question louder.

And it’s not only about sperm count

The documentary leans on male fertility as its headline. The numbers are genuinely alarming: sperm concentrations fell by over 50% between 1973 and 2018, across 57,000 men in 53 countries. And the rate of decline has accelerated since 2000. The average man today produces roughly half the sperm his grandfather did.

Swan says it plainly: “It was too fast to be genetic. Then it’s the environment.”

But I kept thinking about women. Because these chemicals don’t only affect men. They just affect women in ways that are quieter and harder to pin down.

BPA mimics estrogen. That’s not an unconventional claim, it’s why the EU banned it from baby bottles. When it gets into the body it interferes with normal hormonal signalling. Ovarian function. Menstrual cycles. The finely tuned system that ovulation depends on.

A 2024 meta-analysis of over 83,000 women found that BPA exposure was associated with an 82% increased risk of endometriosis and a 61% increased risk of PCOS.

Let that sit for a moment.

One in ten women has endometriosis. PCOS is the most common hormonal disorder in women of reproductive age. And we’re linking both to the same chemicals that are sitting in our clothing.

These are associations, not proven causation. But when the same chemicals keep showing up in our blood, in placentas, in follicular fluid, in study after study pointing in the same direction, it starts to become very hard to argue with.

One doctor put it bluntly: “In clinical practice we are seeing fertility issues on the rise. Thyroid disturbances, reduced ovarian reserve in women, falling sperm counts in men. Many of these trends are consistent with long-term exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, including those found in synthetic fabrics.”

A small interference with your hormones, repeated every day for years. That’s not a small thing.

How I got here

I’ve been buying secondhand since I was fourteen. Before Vinted was Vinted, I was on the forums doing the same thing. It wasn’t political then, it just made sense. Why buy new when you can buy something with a history?

That habit followed me into adulthood. I felt good about my wardrobe. Not buying into fast fashion, keeping things in circulation, not contributing to overproduction. I thought I’d figured it out.

Then I realised circularity is only half the conversation.

You can have a perfectly circular wardrobe and still be wearing plastic against your skin every single day. The ethics of production and the chemistry of the fabric are two completely separate questions. I had been asking one of them and ignoring the other entirely.

It’s not just where did this come from and how long will I keep it. It’s also: what is this actually made of, and what is it doing to my body?

That question led me to a leader in the conscious clothing space whose research I found recently. It felt like a door opening. And then immediately like standing in a room that was much larger and more overwhelming than I expected.

I started looking at my wardrobe differently. Slowly phasing out pieces made from polyester, nylon, elastane, acrylic, viscose, modal, bamboo rayon. And realising that most of what I owned fell into at least one of those categories.

Honestly? It was a lot to sit with. Shocking, in a way. Like having been tricked. You do everything you think is right and then find out there’s a whole other layer you weren’t even looking at. I felt sad about it more than anything. Sad that this is what our world is, and that it seems to just be accepted.

But I’d rather know than not know. And I’d rather figure out what to do about it than feel powerless.

What’s actually in most clothing

Most of the fibres in the modern wardrobe are made from petroleum. Plastic, in wearable form.

Polyester is PET — polyethylene terephthalate. Literally the same material as a plastic water bottle, just drawn into fibre. It makes up around 54% of all fibres produced globally. It sheds microplastic particles every time you wash it or wear it. BPA has been detected in polyester-spandex activewear at up to 40 times California’s legal limit in products from Nike, Athleta, Patagonia. The EU has no restrictions on BPA in textiles.

Nylon — another petroleum synthetic. Microplastic shedder. Standard in activewear, swimwear, lingerie.

Elastane / Spandex / Lycra — all the same thing. A synthetic polyurethane fibre added to almost everything that needs stretch. Including most underwear. Including a lot of underwear sold as “natural” or “sustainable.”

Acrylic — plastic wool essentially. One of the worst microplastic shedders of any fabric.

And then the category I find the most frustrating, because it’s where the most deception lives:

Modal, Viscose, Bamboo fabric. They sound natural. They come from plants — wood pulp, beech trees, bamboo. But the manufacturing process dissolves the plant material in harsh chemicals and extrudes the result as a new synthetic fibre. The end product is semi-synthetic. It is not the natural material the name implies. “Bamboo fabric” is almost universally bamboo rayon. If a brand can’t explain which process was used to make their bamboo fabric, it should tell you something.

The chemicals in all of these don’t disappear after manufacturing. They stay in the fibre. And under heat, friction, sweat, they transfer to skin.

What’s next

What actually worries me most: A plastic bottle you pick up and put down. Clothing you wear against your body for sixteen hours a day.

I’m not here to tell anyone to throw out their wardrobe tomorrow. I did not do that myself and I’m not going to pretend it’s simple. But I want to have the conversation that the fashion industry won’t have, and that even well-meaning documentaries are only just starting to touch.

Sources

The documentary The Plastic Detox — Netflix (2026)

The book Count Down — Shanna H. Swan (2021)

Sperm count decline Levine et al., Temporal trends in sperm count: a systematic review and meta-regression analysis of samples collected globally in the 20th and 21st centuries, Human Reproduction Update, 2022 → Read the study

BPA and women’s hormones — endometriosis and PCOS Plastic-related endocrine disrupting chemicals significantly related to the increased risk of estrogen-dependent diseases in women, Environmental Research, 2024 → Read the study

The dog study — male fertility Shafik, A. Effect of different types of textile fabric on spermatogenesis: an experimental study, Urological Research, 1993 → Read on PubMed

The dog study — female fertility Shafik, A. An experimental study on the effect of different types of textiles on conception, Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 2008 → Read on PubMed

BPA in activewear — 40x California legal limit Center for Environmental Health, New Testing Shows High Levels of BPA in Sports Bras and Athletic Shirts, 2023 → Read the press release → CNN coverage

Sweat increases chemical absorption from clothing Sweat-amplified dermal transfer and combined toxicity of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and organophosphate esters mixtures in children’s textiles, Science of the Total Environment, 2025 → Read the study

BPA in textiles — conventional and recycled Bisphenols in daily clothes from conventional and recycled material: evaluation of dermal exposure to potentially toxic substances, Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 2024 → Read on PMC

I would like to take you with me into my most vulnerable and lonely world. You can tap out now or you can read me. I am sure you will find relatability in the upcoming paragraphs. So stay.

The truth is, I am about to turn 31 and I still often feel like an outsider. I don’t think the external world would have ever labelled me as an outsider, not in high school nor university and not now. Successful athlete, always dating older boys and only hanging out with hot friends back then; endless travels, cool jobs and a very liberated lifestyle now. And my friends are still extremely hot and frikin cool and so is my boyfriend. Love you guys ♡

But let’s be real: all of these things are fantastic and I feel blessed af, and I still experience numbness and heart-wrenching feelings of not belonging as I feel misunderstood.

I experience feeling too much and questioning why people want to be around me. I romanticize heartbreak and therefore sabotage my life. Yes, I can at times be extremely absorbed by my own story. I sit in-between fifty beautiful humans who I am lucky enough to call my friends and still feel like none of them really know me. And no one will ever be able to fully understand me. This is the first-person intimacy I am speaking about.

If you think about your own life, you are the only person in this world that has spent every single second of your life with you. You are the only one who has been there for every experience. Every laughter, every heartbreak, every disappointment, every tear, every dream, every nightmare, every touch, every fight, every exam, every conversation and we can go on foreverandever. What a privilege. And at the same time tragically isolating. I know my internal world inside out, but how do I represent her in the outside world?

Even though I have been with her for every single breath she took, I struggle to pin her down. I see people make statements about themselves and it stings. I don’t know how to describe her in words and it makes me feel like a hypocrite. Foolish. Shouldn’t I know what the signature to my being is? Why is it at times so hard to relate to her and the life she has created around her?

Don’t we all ultimately seek relatability, isn’t that the ingredient for the connection we are longing for? Truth is that I am currently struggling to connect to who I am. And are my dreams even mine?

When there is so much noise in our social world, it is easy for this first-person intimacy to suffer. How often do I actually allow myself to give her my full attention so I can witness her? Have I lost touch with what’s underneath? We often lack such basic understanding of ourselves. It might come from growth and having to meet this new you or simply having outsourced your identity to roles. But if these roles dissolve silently and you don’t know who you are underneath, you are left with confusion.

And maybe your most authentic is yet too hard to hold?

If I am fully her — the one I feel and know so intimately — what would her life look like? Am I living that?

Overwhelmed by the numbness, I went looking for someone who wouldn't run away. And I found her in her bedroom. Lying on the floor, listening to Nirvana, completely uninterested in the world outside that door. My inner teenager.

The songs she played in that room, nobody heard those. She never had to defend them or explain them or perform enthusiasm for them. They were just hers. The unwitnessed playlist. That’s the realest data point I have about who I actually am. The version who existed when no one else was in the bedroom. The one that only had the intimacy with herself to hold onto when the world felt too much. And she didn’t shy away from hiding away. That’s who I’m trying to get back on the phone with. The one who existed before she learned to shape herself around the room, then bring her to the room.

For a month, as an experiment, I will be writing down the small things I notice about myself. All the big identity questions aside, just the quiet obvious stuff.

I will look at the list and see what it tells me. Maybe just the act of writing it down and noticing that these things are mine, that I like what I like and do what I do without needing a reason, maybe that’s already the beginning of the answer. Maybe that’s how I close the gap. Between who I feel myself to be internally and how I’m expressing that externally. By paying attention to the unwitnessed version, the one who exists when no one else is in the room.

I can be confused about who I am now and still be on my way back to remembering her.

Let go & let grow.

Yours sassily,
Liz

Do I like the things I think I like? Or do I like them because others like them, because I believe liking them makes me seem interesting? I hear judgment in my own voice. There is so much noise around us, it is hard to identify what opinion truly belongs to us. Which values are defined from the purity of our very own heart.

Creative block is not always “I don’t have ideas.” It can also look like “I don’t know what’s actually mine.” I wondered, where does creative fuel come from in the first place?

The Armored Amazon

Last week, I learned about “The Wounded Woman” framework. Specifically, the Armored Amazon pattern.

The Armored Amazon is a woman who responded to early wounds by building protective armor: achievement, control, perfectionism, fierce independence. She over-identifies with masculine qualities—logic, ambition, strength—while suppressing vulnerability, softness, and feelings, which she’s learned to see as dangerous weaknesses.

This armor protects her, but it also imprisons her. It’s heavy, rigid, exhausting to maintain.

And here’s what matters: when you suppress vulnerability, you don’t just suppress pain. You suppress vital parts of your personality. Playfulness, spontaneity, creative energy.

That repressed energy doesn’t disappear. It consolidates into something destructive. It becomes depression, rage, self-sabotage. The armor that was supposed to protect you ends up blocking what wants to come through you.

Our language tells us this simply, linguistically: the opposite of depression is expression. Read that again.

When you suppress emotion, it becomes destructive.
When you express emotion, when you let it move from you into something, it becomes creative.

Emotions are creative fuel.

Energy in Motion

And then a woman healer wrote in her email newsletter a few days ago: “How can we use the emotions being stirred within us as fuel for creation? As energy in motion toward a new way?”

And it made me realize that my interpretation of “energy in motion” had been limited the entire time.

I used to think emotion meant energy passing through you. Something you had to sit with, feel, open up the channel of your body for so it could move and ultimately pass. And sure, these things are true, but where does the emotion ultimately go? Into the void?

These emotions want to become something.

We all know what the best songs, paintings, poems, movies, books share: they came from the depth of emotion. Not from strategy or intellect or even skill alone. From feeling.

1. The Times They Are a-Changin' by Bob Dylan fueled by urgency and hope

2. The Scream by Edvard Munch fueled by desperation and panic

3. Desiderata by Max Ehrmann fueled by acceptance and groundedness

4. Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain by Jean-Pierre Jeunet fueled by loneliness and mischief

5. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts fueled by suffering and redemption

You can tell when someone created something because they had to. Because the emotion was so big it needed form. When creation is driven by emotion, it carries something the mind alone can’t manufacture. It has texture. Weight. Truth. It’s raw, human, undeniable.

And this is our biggest human gift.

We feel. Deeply, differently, uniquely. And we have the opportunity to let that feeling become something. Form, work, contribution.

That’s how we make the world richer. Not by all feeling the same things, but by creating from what we each feel. By letting our different emotional landscapes produce different expressions.

The same sunset that makes you weep might leave me unmoved. The injustice that enrages you might not register on my radar. The beauty that stops me in my tracks might pass right through you.

That’s the gift.

Because when you create from what you feel, you make something only you could make. Something that didn’t exist before. Something the world didn’t have until you gave it form.

What I’m Learning

I’m learning that my emotions aren’t just things to survive.

They’re fuel.

The confusion I’ve been sitting in? That’s material.
The rage I’ve been trying to alchemize? That’s energy waiting for form.
The grief, the joy, the restlessness, the longing? All of it. Fuel.

Not something to release and let go, something to use.

Into words. Into visuals. Into systems. Into whatever medium can hold it and give it back to the world as something new. And that’s how we make the world we share richer.

Let go & let grow.

Yours sassily,
Liz

How many times can one say sorry? What am I even apologizing for and who I am apologizing to?

I started asking myself: when did wanting become something I need permission for?

Because somewhere along the way, I learned that saying “I want” is aggressive. Demanding. Entitled. Rude, even.

But here’s what I’m realizing: we don’t just censor ourselves when we speak to others. We censor ourselves from ourselves.

The censorship starts long before the words form. It starts in the body, the moment a desire rises, and we reflexively push it back down because wanting feels dangerous.

The Internal Negotiation

Watch what happens:

“I want this” immediately becomes “but is that fair to ask for?”

“I need this” becomes “but maybe I’m being too much.”

“I deserve this” becomes “but what if I’m wrong?”

By the time we speak, if we speak at all, we’re not translating our truth into softer language. We’re speaking the already-softened, already-negotiated, already-apologetic version that survived our internal censorship.

We say “I would like” because we’ve already decided that “I want” is too much. We’ve pre-emptively made ourselves smaller before anyone even had the chance to say no.

Why We Do This

I think we’d rather not want than risk the pain of wanting and being denied.

It’s a protection mechanism. If you don’t let yourself fully want something, then not getting it doesn’t hurt as much.

But here’s what that costs:

If you can’t let yourself want, you can’t advocate for yourself. You can’t negotiate. You can’t build toward anything. You can’t know what direction to move in.

You become reactive instead of generative. You wait to see what’s offered, what’s available, what’s safe. And then you adjust your desires to fit what seems possible.

That’s not agency. That’s survival mode disguised as flexibility.

What It Cost Me

I spent years in a situation where I felt I didn’t deserve to want anything. So I didn’t even try.

I softened everything. Sugarcoated. Made myself negotiable before anyone asked me to. And my body started rejecting it. Anxiety in moments where I should have spoken up. Physical symptoms I couldn’t explain. A tightness in my chest every time I swallowed words I needed to say.

I told myself I was being reasonable. Accommodating. Low-maintenance. But what I was actually doing was slowly disappearing.

The Breaking Point

There was a moment, after years of this, where I finally said: I’m so over carrying this in my body.

I started practicing. Practicing acknowledging my truth. Leaning into confidence. Backing myself as my new hobby. Not performing it, but actually doing it. Letting myself feel the full weight of what I wanted without immediately negotiating it down.

Self-validation became more important than being validated by others. That’s what gave me my power back.

And then came the test.

Someone was rushing me into a decision. Pressuring me. And instead of accommodating like I always had, I stopped.

I said: “I feel very strongly about this. I’m going to communicate what’s really truthful to me.”

And then I did.

I said things I had never said. Things I’d been censoring for years. “I feel manipulated. I feel put under pressure. This doesn’t work for me.”

What Happened Next

At first, my body felt light. I walked down the hallway and I was bouncing. Actually bouncing. Because naming hard things without softening them felt like liberation.

But then the spiral kicked in. The worry. The fear. Oh god, is this going to fire back at me?

But I made a choice. I stayed calm. I validated my experience. It’s how I felt, so I had to communicate that.

And then she responded. She didn’t reject me. She didn’t get defensive. She opened. She said: “Thank you for opening up this authentic channel of communication.”

When You Stop Performing, Real Connection Becomes Possible

That’s what I didn’t understand before.

I thought sugarcoating was kindness. I thought softening my truth was protecting the other person.

But what I was actually doing was blocking information. I was keeping her in the dark about what was really happening and calling it protection.

When I finally spoke my actual truth (not the managed version, not the performance), suddenly there was real data to work with. Real communication became possible.

Uncensoring isn’t rude. It’s the only way real connection happens.

The Questions I Have Been Sitting With

Why does having desires, opinions, preferences often feel shameful?

What is it that doesn’t feel acceptable about having strong taste and knowing what we want?

Is the pure motivator fitting in? Keeping harmony, not causing friction?

How much life quality do we miss out on because we minimize our truth?

I don’t have all the answers yet. I’m still learning what it means to say “I want” without apology. To speak my truth before I’ve pre-negotiated it down to something palatable.

But I know this: my body feels different now. Lighter. More alive.

Because I’m finally learning that uncensoring isn’t about being difficult.

It’s about being real.

And real is the only frequency that creates actual connection.

Let go & let grow.

Yours sassily,

Liz

Four weeks in Australia have left me speechless. Speechless to what standing on this land makes me witness within myself: peace, faith, opportunity, clarity. Almost overwhelmingly so.

The fact that I’d love it here didn’t come as a surprise, the heaviness of having to leave did. I had just started to feel fully at home in Cape Town. After two and a half years, “home” suddenly was a city far away from what I would call familiar. I always knew that I can’t live the life I desire in the land of the Germans. Somehow, I never fully felt like I belonged, as German as my heritage seems to be.

Hence, living in another country is not new to me, but this call feels different. Bigger. Is my body signaling the impact this land could have on me before I can even attempt to intellectualize or am I simply growing up?

South Africa feels much more accessible from Europe than Australia. With three nieces and one nephew in two different countries plus three grandparents living their last years, it has gotten harder. I feel responsibility, but not the kind that someone else puts on you. The kind that comes from a place of care and wanting to show up. I want to grow closer to my favourite little rascals, and I don’t want my brother to be the only one who receives the phone call when help is needed.

And at the same time my heart keeps whispering that I’ve got to follow the lead of my soul. Will listening guide me to the place that has the capacity to allow my soul to step into its purpose? Is this the place that can hold my visions?

As you can imagine at this point self-doubts kick in. Am I obsessed with building new identities? Am I running away from something — stability, the familiar — or am I directed towards my most fulfilled self? Am I guided towards the place where I can thrive, where I am inspired yet grounded? Where I feel safe yet uplifted? The signs of my nervous system are undeniable.

A quick sidequest

Personally, being in an international relationship is the only way to go (other languages and cultures are sexy), but it does complicate things. The complexity of two humans who have built their whole value systems based on extremely different environments and circumstances, and therefore developed unique life lenses, joining forces holds the potential for an incredibly expansive bond that I would never want to miss, but it also brings challenges with it that I used to think I was above. We are extremely privileged that we can choose between multiple countries due to our (his) passport situation. Most borders are open to us: EU, SA, AUS.

This is therefore not about access, this is about choice.

Notes reflecting when in Australia

can I do this again

move even further away

away from home

cape town? (where is home?)

I feel landed here

grounded

clear-minded

people have the right values

people like the good things

my needs fit in

they are satisfied

what I want from daily life

I find

I have had this call for aus for a long time inexplicably so

destiny?

do I have the inner resources to do this again?

to build more connection?

for the first time in my life

I have a strong female community

and it has transformed my life

made me love myself

made me see myself

made me show myself

made me witness myself

who am I without these women in my life?

can I live without?

can I find again?

I know the friendships won’t end, but distance is distance. And I wonder: who is she without the most resilient, inspiring, emotionally intelligent women right by her side?

A version I currently can’t imagine.

And for this rare occasion, newness — the newness of more female friendships — doesn’t necessarily excite me. Building up relationships and investing in getting to know someone and showing yourself vulnerably takes effort, curiosity, trust, and commitment. Can I open up to connection again?

So here are the big questions: can I give up what I want from life for community? Can I give up community for what I want from life? What identity has to dissolve?

Let go & let grow.

Yours sassily,

Liz

A few months ago, I came across this post on @sistersvillage that resonated so deeply. As I mind-scrolled through my own life, I realised: I’ve always been impulsive.

Often, impulsivity is labelled as reckless. In my world, it’s a strength. Impatience and impulsiveness have always served me. I don’t stay stuck in unsatisfying jobs, I move on. Once, I quit a job after just one day, leaving my mom speechless. I simply knew it wouldn’t do anything for me but make me feel small. I was never afraid of the “what now?”, I trusted I’d figure it out.

As I got older, the expectations grew louder:

You can’t just leave a job after a few months.

Everyone has to settle eventually.

One day, you’ll have to choose a lane and stick to it.

And agreed — finding your place in a micro-universe like a start-up, sports team, or theatre group doesn’t happen overnight and definitely worth it. It’s deeply rewarding to have proven yourself enough to be respected for what you bring. But at some point, stagnancy creeps in quietly. You don’t wake up and think, “As of today I feel stagnant.” It builds slowly, disguised as comfort.

Dissatisfaction is a journey, not a moment. We too often ignore it because change is terrifying. The known feels safe, at least we can predict it. And as we complain about the same things every day, we are stuck in comfort. We hold on to control.

Letting go of that illusion of control — because are we ever really in control? — and stepping into a reality of endless possibilities takes courage.

The more we identify with a role we’ve built or the position we’ve acquired over time, the harder it becomes to seek change. We grow afraid of the in-between. That space between who you were and who you are becoming. Daunting. Or tempting?

Personally, change is what I live for. It’s what makes me feel alive: bathing in the excitement of newness, riding my curiosity in pure joy. It is highly stimulating.

And recently, this characteristic made me step back from my co-founder role at my queer start-up in Berlin and drop out of the Software Engineering masters program I only just enrolled in. A year ago, when I first received my shares after two years of building and improving the product side by side with the original founder, I was excited. I had never seen myself as someone who could run a business and lead a team, nor had I seen myself as someone capable of becoming a programmer. I was intrigued by who I could be. And on paper, the setup was perfect: work from anywhere, study something smart alongside, own shares, be my own boss, surrounded by a kind and emotionally intelligent team, doing purposeful work with fair pay and an extremely high amount of ownership and creative freedom.

Slowly inside me, an intense call for more arose. What more? Why walk away from a dream setup? Aren’t you living the dream? Why would you give up your shares? Can’t you hang in there for longer?, some asked.

Comfort can be seductive and it’s not where expansion lives. What once felt freeing had become limiting. While my co-founder & team burned for it, I started to feel heavy and restless. Bored by the repetition of the same problems. Demotivated, absorbed, stuck in a role that wasn’t authentic to me. My entire body started sending me signs: I felt sick during meetings, anxious before and after 1:1 chats and I craved sleep constantly.

I couldn’t stop wondering: where will this get me if I don’t listen?

My mind spun in circles: Am I still fulfilled? Is this motivating me enough to bring out my best? When is the right moment to move on?

My notes at the time:

nothing is flowing
my body feels depressed, it is aching
i have to make the change
it’s too painful
expansion is limited

society makes me feel like i need to fit into a box, like there is a certain way of doing life

we are messy, expansive beings

boxes don’t serve us, they keep us small

where would i get if i wouldn’t listen?
moving what’s in the way so that what wants to come through me can find its way

stille gewissheit — silent knowing
the in-between two versions

The right moment was now.

Do I know what comes next? No. Do I need to? No. Make space, I thought. I have big dreams, heaps of ideas and visions. I trust that letting go creates space for what’s meant to arrive.

Throughout this process and the realisation that I’d been feeling drained, dreaming of other things, disconnected from the mission of the business and my authentic voice, I caught myself leaning into fear. The fear of leaving something comfortable. Something I knew and almost had full illusionary control over.

And that felt off. That’s not me, I thought. I don’t move through life from a place of worry. I dare to act. I dare change.

Reconnecting with my impulsivity meant reconnecting with my intuition. I don’t need to intellectualise what my reasons are or rationalise if the “next” has the potential to be any better. Whose worries am I responding to here anyways? Ultimately, they were never mine.

It was time to return to my bold and impulsive nature. To trust again in the voice that has always led and never failed me. Release the mind, listen to the body.

Let go and let grow.

Yours sassily,
Liz

For an entire decade, my cycle meant nothing more than remembering to restart the pill on the right day and being slightly annoyed by a period that made sex less convenient. That was it. When I first experienced backache and ovulatory cramps before my bleed, my gynecologist suggested I just pop a pill every day and suppress the side effects. “Why not live pain-free?” I thought. And how glamorous that my teenage acne would improve, I’d be able to skip multiple bleeds whenever I wanted, and birth control would be secured.

From then onwards, I was completely disconnected from the divine nature of my body. It was just so easy, and since I can remember, anyone bleeding monthly was perceived as unfortunate and burdened — a burden the pill could at least soften. And just like that, I lived under the constant influence of medication for 13 years. No one seemed to question that. I was 14 and had no chance to even meet the woman I was gradually becoming, until now.

What do I mean by that? The pill and other hormonal birth control methods come with side effects. With them in our system, we always have a filtered perspective — on ourselves and everything around us. It feels almost like there was another entity standing between me and my natural self. But isn’t it obvious that understanding our cycle is a crucial part of being a woman? If we suppress it unnaturally, we don’t get to feel ourselves fully. For me, and for many others I know, this for example meant living with a subtle, long-term depression. I didn’t experience the full magnitude of my being for 11 years. Which means I experienced my best moments just as my lowest through this filter. How was I supposed to experience the depth of being a woman when my hormones were manipulated daily? When the system she runs on was constantly artificially altered?

Now, two and a bit years later, I finally see her.

The rage I feel in the luteal phase (the week before bleeding) is overwhelming and I feel more wolf than woman. With no target to direct it at, it can be unbearable to sit with. Then it transforms into heaviness, sadness, self-doubt, criticism, obsessiveness, and a deep need for isolation — all byproducts of the actual bleed. Not to mention the physical effects of tiredness and brain fog. Give yourself a break, queen! You are not meant to be equally energetic 30 days a month. That’s what the follicular and ovulation stages are for — creativity, focus, connection, forward-energy. We can only fully lean into those if we allow ourselves to rest and release when we crave softness.

During my self-study, I realized something important: the same thoughts that crush me before and during my bleed don’t bother me at all when I am ovulating. Once I saw that pattern, I began to reclaim power. Each stage of our cycle has a purpose and holds valuable meaning. Nothing in this universe was designed without reason. Instead of fighting it, why not embrace it? It requires reprogramming, but that’s where the magic lies.

This can look like learning how to support our body and mood through the right dietary habits (leading to fewer mood swings, clearer skin, sharper thinking), naturally controlling birth, leveraging our creative powers, resting when we need downtime, and most significantly witnessing the depth of this holy being: YOU.

Getting to know myself unfiltered has been confronting, insightful, humbling, and deeply empowering. Fortunately, I get to learn and witness alongside my incredible female companions. My bestie is so attuned to her needs that she simply says: “I am bleeding and in my cocoon.” With those few words, you know she is bleeding and not available for the outside world. I finally understand what she goes through and adopted her phrase. The main lesson: communicate, my babes. Don’t victimize yourself — own your experience.

You can tell that I have learned to respect bleeding. I truthfully love being a woman, and I am grateful for a healthy body that bleeds regularly. I know not everyone feels this way and I respect that. But personally, I see it as a sacred and holy part of being a woman. It is both a duty and a privilege.

This week, I spoke to my girlfriend (platonic love is real) just before my bleed began and asked her for support while spinning vicious stories in my head. She said: “Maybe an emotion only needs to pass through you, and there is no story attached to it until you forcefully attach one.” It made me wonder: what if our bleed is so much less personal than we think? What if we go looking for problems because we don’t understand what this phase of our cycle really carries in meaning, and therefore don’t know how to hold ourselves through it?

Some ancient philosophies, still present in existing tribes, believe that women bleed out the collective feminine burden — the pain of the entire female existence. We share a nervous system; we share memory. This is so much bigger than you, I thought. And I will try not to get so caught up in my own story, but instead commit to listening to the voice that wants to speak and heal through me.

There is massive potential in understanding a woman’s cycle — potential modern humanity has yet to discover.

So call your sisters, your bitches, your witches. Get the empathy you need and deserve from other women. Educate your kids, include your partner. Create spaces of understanding that ultimately allow us return to our rawest, most embodied feminine selves. There is so much more to our bleed than grumpiness and bloody panties.

Let go & let grow.

Yours sassily,

Liz